There is also a German vendor, I can't think of their name at the moment, that makes a real nice suspension system that you can place within a hard drive slot.... much much nicer than the goofy elastic bands on the Solo... in my opinion. (I think I got mine at FrozenCPU or PerformancePCs)

I have a solo (actually it is my son's)... I just didn't like the look of its suspension option and have never used it myself.

EDIT: Just for clarification, this is an irrefutably true statement:

quest_for_silence wrote:

With reference to hard disk noise, the most notable source usually in a very quiet computer, yes, the Solo is really better.

That being said, only the most extreme silencers care about HD vibration. Generally if I get things so quiet that HD vibration is a problem, I am a happy camper. I can think of only one instance where that wasn't true for me.

The Solo controls HD vibration by suspending the drives using elastic that sort of looks like something made out of the elastic used in under pants... only higher quality. The other alternatives above can be used to suspend hard drives much more securely than does the Solo. The solo has a slight bit of sound deadening as on the side panel as well... but nothing like the Fractal.

And by the way my personal recommendation in your case isn't the Fractal (mostly over with weight issue and some complaints about build quality) I will stick by my recommendation of the Lan Gear... but I don't think you are making a mistake if you get any one of those three cases. They are all good cases. Pick the one you like.

lol, so with the Antec Solo, should i change some fan? how many of them? which model should i buy?

My solo came without fans in the front. Noctua 92mm fans are good fans in my opinion. I had just one lying around so that is what I put in the front. I put a 120mm Scythe in the rear.

I would one or two put Noctua 92mm fans in the front, put the Antec 120mm fan on low... and see how it works. If you don't like it, replace it with a Nexus or Scythe Slipstream. The M model Slipstream is good because it is flexible. You can set it at a wide range of voltages and CFM and it performs well at all those speeds.

I am certain you will be pleased with the result. I forget, but I seem to remember that you picked a good PSU. If so, it will be your video card that will most likely generate the most noise.

If you want more quiet, that is where you will likely need to focus your early efforts. Some people play around with the video card bios to slow down and quiet the video card fans. You can also buy after market coolers for the video card that are both quieter and better cooling than stock.

You can opt on the Solo to either suspend your hard drives or install them in a conventional way. At that time you can determine how much you trust the solo suspension system (let me know if you agree with my underwear elastic analogy). You can go switch back and forth between these two types of mounts as you see fit, when you see fit.

If you use two NOCTUA NF-B9 front fans, you should be able to set it up so you have positive pressure in the case. That I am told keeps the dust levels down inside the case.

Get the 1200 rpm M version of the Slipstream. You can make it go pretty much any speed you would want by varying the voltage.

I recommend this to control the speed of the Slipstream and the front fans:http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=25981I like this because it is so reproducible. With those variable knob controls, you never know what you set it at the last time you used it. This allows you to experiment with different speeds with some precision.

One additional thought. You cooler is already coming with two Noctua 92mm fans. Just for variety sake, maybe you should try two 92MM Nexus fans... or two Scythe Gentle Typhoon fans. You can then experiment back and forth with them.

Notes on the Scythe Gentle Typhoon a. the 120mm Scythe Gentle Typhoon fans are very flexible, the 1900rpm one goes down to I think 600 rpm. I would expect the 92mm are similar.b. Also the GTs generate more static pressure than any of the others (good for CPU coolers) they must operate at higher RPMs than others to attain the same CFM. c. Therefor when buying them I would error on the side of buying faster versions... you can always downvolt them to slower speeds if need be.

5v is quieter, but it might not provide enough airflow. i'd go with 7v.

You will have to experiment. But if you put the CPU Noctuas on low, the Scythe at 5v, and the two front 92mm at some low voltage... (7 volts sound good to me) I think you will find yourself starting out on the right foot.

If it isn't cool enough I would start by juicing up the two front 92mm fans.... to maintain positive air pressure.

i though i would be easier to built a quiet computer, and maybe it wont be quiet at all lol.

Following (uncritically, out of necessity) such own contradictory infatuations (for products that the advisor don't use and/or solutions he never explored) could even lead to that.

Think about just some details, as your expressed need to cut down on spending (do you remember the 50 euros for the Gelid Icy Vision question?), versus his advice to buy a couple of 92mm Gentle Typhoon fans (which he don't know) just in order to test with 92mm Noctuas he suppose you have but which actually you shouldn't have (as you seem oriented to buy the Mugen), or the advice to use thin and soft plastic wires (used in jewelry, not in fishing or similar activities where resistance is a requirement) which will vibrate while stretched against warm/hot metal (which could cut the wires themselves and let the hard drive fall down), and so on.

One point of difference of course between the Solo and the R3 is that the Solo has a top mounted PSU. So all the usual problems of heat from the CPU and/or graphics card potentially triggering higher fan speeds in the PSU. The Fractal Design R3 has a bottom mounted PSU so this would not be an issue.

So given the combination of a i5 2500K and a GTX 460 OC I would say that the Fractal Design R3 is a far better choice of case. It does have that Moduvent thing where additional fan spaces have removable sound-proofing tiles. In addition it comes with two 120mm 1000 rpm fans which are fairly quiet, and a fan controller. So no need to buy replacement fans and/or fan controllers.

The only question then is that of hard drive noise with the R3. There are solutions to that if required. It would probably help to buy one of the quieter hard drives in the first place, such as one of the Samsung F4s.

It would probably help to buy one of the quieter hard drives in the first place

That is the approach that seems to me to always be the best policy. It's better to not have the noise in the first place than to invest all the time running around and chasing it away. Good components are quiet or silent to begin with... and that permits you to select from a much wider variety of cases.

Most probably not. But if you do, and the problem is related to vibration (seems unlikely in the Fractal with all its deadening materials), these will do at least as good a job as the solo in removing the problem and will do a better job of securely holding the hard drives, in my opinion:

Oh one thing, in the solo you will have room for either 3 Noisemagic and no optical drive, or 1 optical drive and 2 Noisemagic. But the Stretch Magic costs very little and is always an option.... just in my opinion, nothing is superior to the Noisemagic.

The MSI N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC is quiet at idle, now during gaming, it wont be a problem.?

The R3 has a bottom 120mm/140mm fan mount, next to the PSU. It might be worth fitting the Fractal Design 140mm Silent Series fan there. It only runs at 600 rpm but moves a decent amount of air quietly. And in this position airflow is directed straight at the graphics card.

justice99 wrote:

The only problem with the Fractal R3 is HDD noise?

The R3 hard drive trays have rubber pads. In early review copies of the previous R2 case these were quite hard. AIUI this was subsequently changed for the R2 to a much softer silcone rubber, and the same applies to the R3. Provided the hard drive fixings are not over-tightened this could be enough.

Incidentally, the two 120mm fans fitted to the R3 are a special edition 1350 rpm model, and are not the same as the 1000 rpm model Fractal sell at retail. The included controller with the R3 can control up to three fans.

I'm more or less done ordering a build with a Solo. I thought the Solo had better sound dampening vs. the R3? The impression I had gotten reading around is that it leaks more noise. I remember one particular comment which stated the R3 was more noisy than the P180 that preceeded it. Hope this is correct, bit of a scare as otherwise the R3 would have been the better choice.. But I guess only time will tell.

The MSI N460GTX CYCLONE 1GD5/OC is quiet at idle, now during gaming, it wont be a problem.

I have 3 WD20EARS and 1 SSD, i will mostly use my SSD, now if its a problem, i will think of doing something.

The only problem with the Fractal R3 is HDD noise?

No, I wouldn't call it a problem, it's just a refinement matter, providing that the WD20EARS are already some of the quietest drives money can buy.

What I see more as an issue it's *now* the overall thermal balance: eventually with 3 (not just one, as I supposed by your original post) hard drives at the same time, and a 120-150W videocard like an oc'ed GTX 460 (while the R5770 I adviced initially for is an 80W one, on load), I think you've exceeded the thermal (cooling) limits for a really quiet working Antec Solo, and so even for me something like a Fractal Design R3 would be probably a better overall solution (look also at SPCR review of the far cheaper - it starts from 43 euros in France, IIRC - Zalman Z9 Plus: even if not built at all with silence in mind, it compares very well against the FD, when loaded similarly as you're going to do).

I can confirm that the build is very silent at idle. the loudest components at idle are samsung F3, Tricool and NH-U12P. I use the hard drive supports (i do not use the elastics);

However, on gaming load, i can also confirm that the Antec Solo cannot exhaust the heat quickly. This leads to a quick ramp up of the 6850 fan. As i play with closed headphones, it does not disturb me much, but i confirm that it gets toasty and noisy.

For me, the Antec solo has several known drawbacks : limited size for graphic cards, PSU at the top of the case, messy builds with cables every where, difficult to extract gaming load heat. But at idle, this case is excellent.

There are unlikely to be any issues at idle whatever. By default both the Sandy Bridge CPU and the graphics card GPU will underclock and undervolt automatically under idle conditions. The Mugen 2 has a PWM fan, so its speed will decrease/increase based on system load. So the CPU fan should run at 500-600 rpm at idle, and be effectively silent. The fans on the graphics card work on the same basis.

If there's one change you could make it might be to fill the bottom fan space in the R3 with the Fractal Design Silent Series 600rpm 140mm fan. This would give a more direct filtered air flow to the graphics cards/CPU area of the case.

What happens under load will be another matter. To test this I would suggest something like the Unigine Heaven DX11 2.5 benchmark http://unigine.com/products/heaven/ which is perhaps more representative of a gaming load on the system than Furmark. If you start something lke HWMonitor http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html before running the benchmark this will show you the maximum CPU, core and GPU temps you are reaching.

At idle, if i turn GPU fan to minimum (40%), my CPU fan to minimum and the front/back fan of my case to min, the computer is almost inaudible, and i am very close to it. I can only ear a little ''breath'', i dont know if i can do better, maybe its my GPU, the gpu's fan run at 1800rpm at idle, cant do better.The temp are perfect, 38degres for GPU and 35-40 degres for CPU.

Even when i play games like Crysis2, the computer is not noisy, i can play without headphone.

So its great, i will upgrade my GPU if i find a very quiet model.Thank you everybody for all your advice.

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